Project Grizzly

If I were to encounter a grizzly bear—and somehow live to tell the tale—I suspect I would be changed by the experience, and probably not for the better. Most likely, I would become some sort of paranoiac anti-wilderness freak, never daring to set foot near anything that remotely resembles teeming, uncontrolled nature. City parks would reduce me to an irrational, sniveling terror. Friends would turn away in disgust as I preached the virtues of clear-cutting and forest fires. Teddy bears would send me into a rage with their vile pro-ursine propaganda.

But when Troy Hurtubise encounters a bear and is mysteriously spared, he is changed in a far different manner (though one could still debate whether or not for the better). Instead of recoiling from nature, Troy faces it head on, dedicating his life to building a suit that can withstand the assault of a grizzly. Now, as Troy lumbers about in a nearly 200-pound shell of titanium and chain mail, all I could think is one thing—what the hell is the point of this lunacy? Is he planning to walk up to a bear and punch it in the nose?

Project Grizzly dedicates itself to chronicling this baffling quest in all its absurd yet compelling glory. The film employs a somewhat cheeky tone at times, courtesy of director Peter Lynch, who seems bemused as much as he is fascinated with this man’s zealous project. When Troy and company ride into the Rocky Mountains to field-test the suit, the score turns martial, gently mocking the men’s pretense to wage war against the natural world. Nature, of course, remains completely indifferent to the petty games of men, and the group spends a week in the mountains without spotting a single bear. Only as they leave does a grizzly finally appear, but by then the suit is abandoned under a blanket of snow and playtime is over.

Lynch doesn’t try to overanalyze Troy’s obsessions, although he does allow for some tantalizing explanations. The paternal relationship is trotted out as one possibility, as the film reveals Troy’s father spent three years building a full-size re-creation of an Iroquois village (maybe monomania is genetic?). The father-son dynamic that Lynch emphasizes is almost mythic: a son seeking approval from his now-departed father. Beneath the idolization of the father there are hints of tension, and it’s hard to tell if Troy is driven by a need to live up to his father’s example or simply surpass him entirely. Notably, Troy’s nickname for the bear that almost killed him is “The Old Man.” His relationship to the animal is a mixture of awe and antagonism—a tender anger that mirrors his own relationship to his father.

If this sort of Freudian stuff doesn’t light your cigar, there’s always the adrenalin junky angle. Much talk is heard of “the edge,” the potency of adrenalin, and the need to return to that same rush first felt during some life-threatening experience. During the mountain expedition, one of the men—a Vietnam War vet, if you can believe it—talks about a game called “Outrun the Grenade” that he used to play with fellow soldiers during dull moments between battles. It’s basically what you think it is.

How else to explain cringe-inducing but often hilarious footage of Troy testing different incarnations of the suit by submitting himself to all sorts of punishment? He is rammed by a truck, battered by a log, and thrown down the Niagara Escarpment. At one point, he invites several burly bikers to beat him up with their bludgeons of choice. After their baseball bats splinter apart, he takes off his helmet and does a merry little jig to celebrate. When the log knocks him flat, he tells everyone he feels fine—better than he did before the log hit him, in fact, since his arm had fallen asleep but is now awake again.

So Troy is clearly a bit of a nut, if a charming one. These sort of charismatic monomaniacs are the bread-and-butter of the documentary form (see Man on Wire for another good example of this type of film): voluble types, somewhat self-absorbed but capable of an intense passion most people will never know. During the mountain expedition, it’s hard not to fall under the spell of Troy’s personality. As a raconteur, he’s first-class. His retelling of the bear encounter that changed his life is pure theatrics. He relives the memory as he recounts it, even throwing himself on his back when he describes how the bear knocked him down. At another point, he goes on a lengthy rant about the two knives he carries, explaining how they are necessary for protection from animals of the two-legged—as opposed to four-legged—variety. There are some real crazy folks up in the mountains, he tells us (yeah, no kidding). He then shows us how one knife is better for stabbing, while the other is for throwing.

Of course, you know that he has never had to stab a deranged mountain dweller—it’s not like there are scores of violent survivalists hiding in Banff National Park, for god’s sake—and most likely never will. This is all a lot of bluff and preparation for a threat that only really exists in his head, much as the suit is preparation for an encounter with a bear that will never come. His ambition and drive are impressive, but it’s disturbing to consider that this life-path borders so close to self-destruction (a cursory online search reveals he has already been bankrupted once by this project).

Still, there’s no denying that the suit is an incredible piece of work. Troy may be a mad mountain-man Ahab hunting his land-bound Moby Dick, but that doesn’t mean he can’t achieve great things, right? This film is pure charm, but it also illustrates the simultaneously creative and destruction power of obsession, which threatens to ruin this man’s life even as it drives him to great lengths of ingenuity. Even if reality never obliges him with the flesh-and-fur foe he craves, Troy will soldier on. Perhaps we should just be grateful that someone out there is willing to put so much effort into handling the ursine threat. After all, while he tinkers with his suit, who knows what the grizzlies are planning?

Just consider this: bears with chainsaws.

So who’s the crazy one now?

EIFF: Gomorrah at the end of the festival

The Edmonton International Film Festival has been over for several days now, and yet I continue to churn out these entries, trying desperately to write about as many films as possible before they are all consigned to the graveyard of memory. Even as I type these words, I can feel the casket closing on Let the Right One In, a Swedish coming-of-age tale spiced up with vampires. That’s an oversimplification of what is actually an interesting little movie, but it has been lost in the blur of films I’ve seen since. I’ve given up on writing anything about it, save for these few words, which I offer in the way of apology and epitaph. Its sense of privileged intimacy reminded me of a secret shared between friends, and so what it said to me shall remain untold.

The reason I couldn’t find time to say anything else about Let the Right One In is for a simple and welcome reason—I was too busy watching other films. I began writing about this year’s festival with some anxiety about EIFF’s usual fondness for bottom-of-the-barrel crowd-pleasers, and the short film selection seemed to bear this out. The bulk of the short films I saw stuck mainly to a glib-cute tone that quickly grows wearisome when it dominates all other styles. There were a couple of stylish allegories that offered some relief, if not genuine satisfaction (The Eye and Next Floor), and at least one lovely, oblique mood piece (The 12th Alley, a lonely metaphysical bowling alley soliloquy), but these were the rare exceptions.

More common were variations on clichéd ideas, such as stories of kids trying to get their ball back from an elderly person (baseball in the case of A Pickle; soccer in the case of Because There Are Things You Never Forget) or the usual bland comedies about the war of the sexes (which probably covers about half of the short films at the festival). Still, the low point had to be From Little Things Big Things Grow, which is four minutes of hyper-cuteness that could spur even the softest heart to infanticide. School children dance as they sing the title song, a cheesy piece of self-esteem celebration that includes lyrics where the children all say what they want to be when they grow up. I appreciated the specificity of the kid who said he wants to be a graphic designer; I’m a little more concerned about the one who said she wants to be a mermaid. Trust in yourself, and you can do anything, even become an imaginary creature. That’s one to grow on, but I’m not sure what it’s doing in a film festival.

Despite my disappointment with this year’s slate of short films, the features offered some surprising gems. EIFF tends not to stray too far from the middle of the road, but they do occasionally swerve precariously close to the ditch. But to be fair, there were even some fine films that were a perfect match for the festival’s populist sensibilities. Consider Man on Wire, an excellent documentary by any measure, but also essentially an inspirational movie about a man following his dream. Still, it is not saccharine or condescending, but rather an elusive, moving film, and proof that a film can fulfill the crowd-pleaser mandate of EIFF without forsaking craft or ingenuity. Which is really just my way of saying that there is no excuse for pap like From Little Things Big Things Grow.

You may ask what is four minutes of discomfort in exchange for hours of pleasure, and you would be right—besides, part of the fun of watching short film programs is seeing stuff you normally would never go near. You may also ask what sort of misanthrope sneers at cute, cheerful children, and all I can say is now you know. But if am I to truly do this festival justice, how can I end on a such sour note? A true crowd-pleaser should end on some sort of positive, optimistic high. To that end, allow me to present one final review, this time for Gomorrah, a dense, powerful Italian mob epic directed Matteo Garrone.

Gomorrah

Let me be clear on one thing: this is not a typical mob story. Near the beginning of the film, Garrone shows a couple of teenagers quoting dialogue from Scarface, as if to emphasize how far he strays from the usual glamorization of violence and wealth found in films about organized crime. Even the opening scene—a series of gruesome murders in a tanning salon—teases the audience with a promise of violence that is never quite fulfilled. The scene begins by mocking the vanity of these middle-aged, pudgy mobsters preening over their looks, but the sight of their dead bodies in the buzzing blue light of the tanning beds is a chilly taste of what is to come. There is no glorious final shoot-out for these men—death is ugly, swift, and brutal.

The reason for this stark contrast to the typical mob film is probably because Garrone has a very real target in this film: the Camorra, the oldest and one of the largest organized crime cartels in Italy. This isn’t some starry-eyed mob movie (as the teenagers quoting Scarface seem to believe they are starring in), but a drama that draws its purpose from real conditions. This is still fiction, but it is tied intimately to real problems posed by the Camorra.

The film is built out of multiple stories, most of which centre on characters from a single apartment complex, and the layers of walkways that make up the building mirror the various parallel narrative threads that run throughout the film. Some stories might seem almost recognizable, like that of the grocery boy who begins working for the Camorra despite his mother’s misgivings, or the two aforementioned Scarface-quoting teenagers who steal from the Camorra and openly defy its power. Others are more unique, such as the story of a tailor who secretly teaches workers at a Chinese garment factory, risking his life by helping one of the Camorra’s rivals. Another tale follows a young man who works as an assistant for one of the Camorra’s garbage disposal bosses, who roams from site to site, scrounging up new dumping grounds for dangerous waste.

None of these threads connect in any obvious way. Fate is not hurtling these people through space and time towards some sort of grand unity in the end; the Camorra has replaced fate. You defy the Camorra and you die, or else you join it and you die. The characters are linked through the Camorra, so that it becomes the great unifier in this film, the only unity possible in this poor place. It is entrenched in tradition and pervades the social order. In a telling shot, we see the grocery boy running drugs for the Camorra on one of the walkways in the apartment complex, and then the camera drifts to a wedding procession passing on the walkway below.

The film is filled with such striking moments. When the drivers responsible for transporting toxic waste refuse to work after one of their own is badly burned after a spill, the Camorra’s man rounds up a bunch of young children and tells them to each pick a truck. Hustling about in a game mood, he gathers cushions to allow them to see over the steering wheel, and Garrone shows the man triumphantly watching a procession of heavy machinery driven by children. It’s an absurd, comical sight, but obviously disquieting as well. Even better is a scene where a dying man lies on his bed, crucifix above his head, rasping “euro” over and over again, invoking a new god as capricious and cruel as the one of old.

There’s a grim humour to such images, even as they reveal the sick social order that has arisen because of the Camorra. Most of the characters struggle with finding a way out from under the Camorra’s influence, but the organization is simply too pervasive. It controls so many aspects of the economy that there doesn’t seem to be any way of leaving one Camorra business without somehow, even inadvertently, joining another. Indeed, the Camorra is the economy in this film, blurring the line between capitalism and crime until the two seem interchangeable. As average workers watch their savings and jobs disappear while executives get multi-million-dollar severance packages, this idea rings true no matter where you are. It might even be—dare I say it?—a bit of a crowd-pleaser.

EIFF: Man on Wire

In 1974, Philippe Petit set up a wire between the two towers of the World Trade Center and walked across it. In fact, he crossed it eight times, spending 45 minutes on a wire 110 stories above the ground.

It would be hard to make a dull documentary out of such a remarkable story. After all, how could a man who snuck into the World Trade Center to do a wire-walking performance be boring? But even beyond the obvious interest of the subject matter, this is an exceptional documentary, well-crafted and haunting. At times, it is part love story, charting Petit’s obsession of the towers from afar, showing the towers being built alongside images of his childhood, as if their meeting was somehow destiny (as one friend of Petit says, the towers were built for Philippe, of course).

At other times, it feels like a heist movie as it follows the elaborate plotting and preparation required in setting up the stunt. Petit cases the joint, as if it were a bank he was breaking into. He takes pictures, makes diagrams, and builds models to figure out where to place the wire. He impersonates a French newspaper journalist and manages to get in with a couple of friends in order to take photographs of the top of the building and quiz workers on safety hazards. True to heist movie form, there’s even an inside man.

Petit possesses an undeniable hint of megalomania. As his former girlfriend notes, when she met him, it was just assumed she would follow his destiny—whatever path she might have for her own life, it was secondary to his own. Still, the man is incredibly charismatic. As he describes his obsession, his plans, his great schemes, he talks rapidly, hands whirling about as if he were physically conjuring up his memories. He’s a superb story-teller, witty and self-dramatizing, and yet his intensity is never off-putting.

Maybe this is because there is a purity to Petit’s goal. He doesn’t seem preoccupied with wealth or fame. He just wants to walk between the towers because they’re the tallest in the world, because it would simply be a great thing to do and share with others. You start to understand his mania when you actually see the wire walk—the event is captured in stills and video footage so grainy that sometimes it seems like the wire isn’t even there, that he actually might be walking on thin air. In one image, he has a great, broad grin on his face, caught in mid-laugh. In another, he lies down on the wire, completely casual and calm. Having conquered such height, he makes it seem like the distance between the sky and ground has collapsed. He might as well be inches from the street.

It’s a remarkable moment, and the film allows it to speak for itself. In fact, I’m not sure if anyone could possibly put words to such a moment. When one of Petit’s childhood friends and co-conspirators tries to explain what happened on that day, he can’t do it. He trails off, buries his face in his hands, and simply cries.